2009 Creatrix Prize Winners


2009 CREATRIX POETRY & HAIKU PRIZES

Congratulations to all the winners of the 2009 Creatrix Poetry/Haiku Prizes from Issue 3 to Issue 6.

Thank you to Andrew Burke, Peter Jeffery and Maureen Sexton for judging the competition.
Thank you to all the poets who contributed to Creatrix from Issue 3 to Issue 6.

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Creatrix Poetry Prize Winners

First Prize – Christopher Konrad

Trakl

Second Prize – David Barnes

status

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Creatrix Haiku Prize Winners

Joint First Prize – Meryl Manoy

ebb and flow
tai-chi practice
on the beach

Joint First Prize – Gary De Piazzi

tap tap
of rotating sprinkler –
distant cicadas

Highly Commended – Natasha L Adams

wildflowers –
the expectant mother
steps carefully

Highly Commended – Liana Joy Christensen

springtime gone
still the child’s heart
loves Issa

Highly Commended – Rose van Son

old roses
grandmother’s garden
flowering still

Highly Commended – Jenny de Garis

above the water
four frogs in siesta shade –
we wade in over gravel

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Creatrix Poetry Prize Winners

First Prize

Trakl

I read my ancestors
their blood like Celtic tea leaves
I read their poems
my own language
I trace my lineage through this dry land
through their snow
through the light in my mouth
///////with these globes for eyeballs

as I read ‘Austrian Poetry for Today’ I notice
///////they missed out my favourite poet, Trakl
but through their veins
these dark writers
I trace myself back to him to
///////his self death

I trace, as if over corpse Braille
the geography of the many self deaths of
these people of the mountains and
of the upper and lower flatlands
I almost started counting them
these disappearances: almost
Trakl foremost in my history
I felt with my fingers
that hard, raised print outlining so much self obsession
so much preoccupation with the
end of life
I look to their archetype
to these old Celts and
Trakl
I notice he is the most missing from these pages

Christopher Konrad

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Second Prize

status

there is no one,
no one to impress, no need anymore;
what does it matter? I’m an old man

who has lived to see the past, pass like seasons-

a remote observer
wandering city streets,
wearing clothes to match
the changing divisions of the year;

a misshapen
Modernistic sculpture
rises in front of me
an agony to my eyesight.

“What is it supposed to symbolize I wonder.”

if only
a soaring eucalyptus tree
with leaves that give off a pungent scent
grew here in its place, sculpted by nature itself.

ahead of me, a streetwalker
dressed in faded denims and dirt
with matted hair,
harvests empty cans.

his needs not met
his stomach unfilled, he has no one to impress either.
as I walk by, I observe

blue and white-collar workers pass– disgust written on faces

i whisper an old adage,

Status.

David Barnes

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